Enabling Discovery

NCSA Mosaic screenshots

Mosaic versions

In the beginning there was NCSA Mosaic....

Version 0.1a

Development began in June 1993 - Internal testing Only

Native support for accessing documents and data using World Wide Web, gopher, Anonymous FTP, and NNTP (Usenet News) protocols. Support for archie, finger, whois, and Veronica (as well as others) through gateways.

Full HTML display

Support for inlined GIF images in HTML hypertext documents

Internal sound support for Sun/NeXT/DEC .AU audio files

Support for GIF, JPEG, MPEG, QuickTime for Windows, Microsoft Video for Windows, Postcript and other documents via forking to appropriate viewers (user configurable)

Full hypertext support, including using inlined images as anchors

Optional toolbar with shortcut buttons

Optional status bar to display hyperlink destinations

Local History

Fully customizable font selection

Savable preferences, including window size and position

Minimal Hotlist

Scrolling for large documents

Status of loading/decoding shown in status bar

Version 0.2a

Fixed some memory leaks

Now works with Winsock 1.1 compliant DLLs

Local file support

User configurable hotlist

Ability to add current document to hotlist

Version 0.3a

Fixed bug which would cause a GPF upon exiting

Fixed a number of memory holes which would lead to GPF's and quickly running out of available resources. (although some probably still remain).

Binary Transfer Mode.

Support for Inlined X-Bitmaps

Configuration option to automatically load a home page.

User configurable menus

Internal support for AIFF audio files

Fixed bug which would cause a crash if an inlined image was missing

Fixed strange bug which resulted 'y with quotation mark' characters

Added ability to perform remote search (still has a bug...see below)

Version 0.4a

Null chunk bug has been fixed! You should no longer see Mosaic dropping parts of a document.

Problems with anchors on left edge of the window have been fixed.

GPF when choosing "Add Current to Hotlist" with no document loaded has been fixed.

Anchors in preformatted text now work correctly.

The new line break tag (<BR>) has been implemented.

Description lists display correctly.

Lists can now be nested to arbitrary depth.

The bold (<B>) and italics (<I>) tags now work.

We now try to load an image several times before we give up on it. This is actually a little annoying on documents that have missing images (such as some of the Vatican Exhibit docs), but I'm working on fixing that.

Mosaic for Windows calls WSACleanup to clean up the sockets library. This may temporarily cause a problem for people using our library - Windows will give the message "Application Error - Call to Undefined Dynalink" when you try to exit. Don't worry about it. We'll get around to fixing it.

Lastly, the fix to the bug that was wiping out chunks of a document seems to have improved the GPF'ing. However, it still crashes every once in a while, and it still seems to be a much more frequent occurence in the non-debugging version of the program. *sigh*.

Version 0.5a

Released Sept. 16, 1993

Image cacheing within document - no more multiple loads of images when they are used multiple times in a document.

MUCH faster scrolling, due to smarter drawing function. This introduced an as-yet-unfixed redrawing bug while scrolling in a document that has inlined images.

This seems to alleviated the problem with documents being visually mangled when loaded while not scrolled to the top.

Bug with removing spaces in Gopher, News, and FTP is fixed.

Internal anchors - i.e., hyperlinks to anchors within a document - work now, complete with scrolling to the correct location.

File Typing (i.e. HTML vs plaintext) is done more intelligently.

Home Page button and Menu option work now, loading whatever document is set up as "URL0" in WMOSAIC.INI.

Open Local capability - use standard file dialog to open files on local disk.

Drag and Drop local file capability

Drag and Drop file to annotation window

Image retry is smarter - knows when it failed to connect vs when server returned an error.

Find/Find Next (searching within a document)

The white strip that was showing up in the Fast and Error bitmaps when they were hyperlinks is gone.

Spaces are now stripped out at the beginning of list indices and paragraphs.

Version 0.6b

First beta release - September 28, 1993

Try out the brand-new "Mail to Developers" option under the Help menu!! This lets you send email to the developers straight from your PC. Be sure to set up your email address in WMOSAIC.INI.

The ISMAP image attribute is supported!! For a demo of this, take a look at the Expo.

History Window is now fixed - "Back" and "Forward" work correctly.

"Display Inlined Images" option is now complete - shut this off to not transfer inlined images (lots faster for people running over a slow net connection). Press the left mouse button to traverse a hyperlink, press the right mouse button to load an unloaded inline image.

Documents without titles no longer have the last document's title in the title bar.

The background color can be set to white instead of grey.

The underlining/anchor bug seen on the Mosaic demo page is fixed.

The problem with menu items on Menu 8 being mapped to Menu 2 is fixed.

Temporary file names are chosen more intelligently (attempts to use the source file's name.)

Version 1.0

Released Nov 11, 1993

The scrolling bug is fixed. You shouldn't see the screen mess up due to images or large text in the document anymore.

Network I/O is now (somewhat) interruptable. Click on the big Mosaic icon in the upper-right corner to kill a net transfer.

Also, quitting Mosaic forces a kill of any net transfers in progress. This means the "Can't run two instances of the same program" error message shouldn't appear anymore (although this feature is still a bit buggy.)

Images can now be alligned middle, top, or bottom, instead of just top. Considering that the default is bottom, and we only did top before, I was pretty surprised that no-one mentioned this anomaly throughout all our beta testing.

News articles are now readable (i.e., not all on one line.)

URL redirection (a feature of HTTP 1.0) is now supported.

Home Page loading is fixed.

If you were having problems with the first document you tried never loading, but subsequent ones working fine, that's fixed.

Title and URL boxes are redrawn at the correct time now.

Back & Forward Assertion Failed errors are gone.

Telnet executable (used for telnet:// URLs) is now configureable - see "telnet=" under the Viewers section of the INI file.

FTP error messages are now returned to the user.

FTP logins now use your email address when logging in (this fixes a connect problem the CERN LibWWW was creating.

You can log in to a NON-anonymous FTP via the following method: set the URL to be FILE://username@machine/pathname. For example, to log in as user "jdoe" to FTP site "ftp.yoyodyne.com", in the "/usr/jdoe" directory, give the URL: "file://jdoe@ftp.yoyodyne.com/usr/jdoe" Mosaic will pop up a dialog box, asking to confirm the username and give your password. Your password is maintained within Mosaic until you quit. Do NOT use this feature if you are security-paranoid.

Gopher and FTP now use pretty icons for files/directories/etc, and FTP shows the file sizes.

New set of Configured Menus, with all kinds of pointers.

Horizontal rules are prettier now.

Version 2.0alpha1

Released Jan 31, 1994

HTML+ Forms are now supported! This is not quite finished, but definitely well into the useful stage.

- Nasty problem with local file support fixed.

There is now an environment variable for the location of the MOSAIC.INI file. To use this, put a line like the following in your AUTOEXEC.BAT:

SET MOSAIC.INI=C:\MISC\MY_MOS.INI

XBMs are now written as 1 bit bitmaps. This means Mosaic now works in 24-bit and 16-bit video modes.

Better error reporting (explanatory text instead of numbers.)

Cursor now behaves itself - hourglass cursor only appears during transfers when cursor is in window, and doesn't flash.

Horizontal rules no longer disappear.

URL/Title text overwriting boxes now fixed.

FTP is now much more stable.

Anchors in "pre" formatted text bug fixed.

Mosaic now supports a command-line parameter for URLs and local files (it discriminates between a pathname like C:\TMP\TEST.HTML and a URL like file:///C|/TMP/TEST.HTML.)

Inlined images are now cached across documents - if an image is in a previous document, it won't be reloaded from the net.

Background is erased before redrawing when right-clicking on an unloaded image

Window position saves correctly again

Fixed drawing of search window

Minor memory leak fixed in NCSA Icon

Minor memory leak in SGML parser fixed

Memory leak fixed in Document

A few more GDI leaks plugged

Doubled available user menus (to 20 menus, 40 items each)

Version 2.0alpha3

Released April 6, 1994

Mosaic is now a 32-bit application.

You can run multiple instances of the program.

printing (still has problems with bold, long documents, and images)

Viewing and Saving of document source ( File, Document Source...)

Access authentication

GPF on forms reloading fixed

Case insensitive find implemented (option in the find box)

GPF with Find Dialog fixed

Vertical scrollbars no longer disappear in large files

horizontal scrollbars now appear for documents wider than the screen (Still have problems with the history window)

Improved internal audio support - allows playing of .au files on 8-bit cards. To use the internal audio support, remove the .au extension from the audio/basic definition in the [Suffixes] section of your mosaic.ini file.

Bug with deeply nested tags fixed

"-i inifile" command-line option for INI file location.

ie. mosaic -i c:/directory/mosaic.ini.

< OPTION> tags won't crash Mosaic anymore

fixed bug with downloading files via FTP

FTP slightly improved - now able to connect to ftp.microsoft.com, e.g.

< em > and < strong > tags now supported

< dir > and < menu > tags are now more properly supported

Grey out back & forward when no current doc

Screen repaint from another window on top is occasionally wrong

Screen repaints get "lost" if busy fixed for 3.1 but still a problem with NT

When search window disappears, focus switches to main window.

"Add Current to Hotlist" when current hl is QUICKLIST now works (unlimited size)

"Add Current to Hotlist" works for URL's without titles (gohper servers)

Open URL Dialog now fits on a 640 x 480 screen

entity (&) termination

Focus switches to Search window when it appears

better filename mungeing (Unix files will now be properly converted to reflect the last extension. ie. here.it.is.txt will become here.txt)

Version 2.0alpha4

Released April 14, 1994Bugs Fixed:

News:URLs.

underline anchor.

resizing w/o a file.

Scrolling ISINDEX docs.

Updating problems of the NCSA icon.

The problem with view source on cached docs.

The lost slash bug (the Temp files under Win31.)

Version 2.0alpha5

Released June 24, 1994Bugs Fixed

There were two large memory leaks which occurred whenever an inline image was decoded and displayed. These leaks were approx. 1,000 bytes each.

The document view window was being drawn incorrectly whenever the user was at the bottom of a document, and Mosaic was re-sized.

XBM images are now properly read and do not result in an ERROR graphic.

XBM images used to require a LARGE amount of time to decode. The code was re-written and now .xbm's decode approximately 100 times faster.

The Printing bugs; large files, images, bold text, .txt files.

Some minor problems with dialog boxes were fixed.

The CRASH caused by incorrect HTML, &lt dt &gt and &lt dd &gt tags without the &lt dl &gt tag, was corrected. Mosaic is a little more forgiving, but not much. ;^)

The navigate back should now take you back to the last document viewed. Previously, Mosaic did not update the history when users accessed documents that were cached.

Enhancements

It is now possible to enter a URL directly to the Document URL line. Select the Document URL line, enter the URL and press return to open the desired URL.

The Vertical Scroll Bar is currently a permanent fixture on the document view window. This eliminates an extra screen redraw which would occur whenever the user went from a short document (less than one screenful) to a long document or vice versa. Ideally we'd like the vertical scroll bar to be dynamic without the extra redraws, but this will improve things for now.

The buttons on the button bar are now in color.

The "FIND" button was redrawn with a more intuitive picture. It used to look like a thermometer and may have lead people to believe it was for the hotlist.

Version 2.0alpha 6

Released July 27, 1994Bug Fixes

This latest release has focused on speed and memory issues. Our next release, alpha 7, will address many of the bugs which you have reported to us. The following bugs have been fixed in alpha 6:

The loading of local URLs should no longer produce DNS Lookup failures.

The loading of local images and sound files no longer deletes the file.

The loading of images now shows the transfer progress.

Added Features

A face lift

Speed

Kiosk Mosaic

Additional Help

Version 2.0 alpha 7

Released Sep 7, 1994Bug Fixes

Local files are no longer deleted.

Local files are no longer duplicated.

file:// = ftp:// (Alpha 6 locked file:// for local files and ftp:// for remote files. However, due to the large number of existing files that were written using the old definition of file://, we had to revert back to file:// = ftp://. Thus, file:///c| MUST be used to access local files.)

Image alignment problem. Inline images align horizontally.

The -i option was fixed. (-i allows the user to use the mosaic.ini that is explicitly defined. ie. mosaic.exe -i c:\ncsa\mosaic.ini)

Added Features

The save, save as function. Save and Save as will save the current document to your local disk.

Animated Icon Change. We've changed the size of the icon to be relative to the amount of space that is available in the window. ie. If you use both the tool bar and the Show Current URL functions, you will have a full-size animated icon. If you choose not to use either of these functions, the icon will be reduced in size to fit in the available space.

Tool tips were added. Tool tips offers the user information about the current tool the mouse cursor is pointing at in the Tool bar.

The find icon on the Tool bar has changed from the list icon to a binocular icon.

We've removed the "URL" title from the "Show Current URL"

Version 2.0 Alpha 8

Released Dec 20, 1994Features and Enhancements

Tables

Common Client Interface

Options, Preferences menu

Stand Alone Mode

Additional Tags:

Underline - <U> </U>

Strikeout - <STRIKE> </STRIKE> OR <S> </S>

Simple Superscript - <SUP> </SUP> OR <SUPER> </SUPER>

Simple Subscript - <SUB> </SUB>

Mosaic supports inline Transparent Gifs.

The NCSA Mosaic logo has a new look.

Mosaic will use the Temp directory as defined in your autoexec.bat file.

The way Mosaic displays data has improved significantly.

Mosaic is more forgiving about bad html. It shouldn't crash if it encounters bad html.

Forms: input controls of TYPE=Image are supported

Bug Fixes

Anchor underline

All known printing bugs

Color palette problems

Forms:

White space is handled properly

Mosaic will remember the fields on a form after you submit it.

SUBMIT and RESET function properly

CHECKBOX and RADIO controls function properly.

PLAINTEXT uses the preformatted style for display.

TEXTAREA controls function properly

Version 2.0 Alpha 9

Released Jan 25, 1995Features and Enhancements

Presentation Mode (ALT-P)

"Cancel" and "Check" buttons in the URL Bar

Right Mouse Button Menu Options

New HTML Tags:

HTML 2.0 Entities

mailto

A new CCI function call

Additional Options, Preferences:

Apply Now

Viewer Configuration

General, Delayed Image Loading

Services, Display FTP Messages

Improved Image Palette Management

Bug Fixes

Mosaic is more lenient about the syntax of the menu item definitions in the "mosaic.ini" file. Bad syntax caused crashes on startup in Version 2Alpha8. :(

Mosaic will no longer crash if you try to print a document with inline images when the "Display Inline Image" option is turned off.

Mosaic won't choke on the Comment Tag, "<!-- Your comment -->

Title Tags, <TITLE> </TITLE> will recognize entities

Mosaic won't choke on CRs and LF between the quotes in the Image Tags, <IMG SRC="..."> and Anchor Tags, <A HREF=" ... ">.

Version 2.0.0 Beta 1

Released March 13, 1995Features and Enhancements

Options, Preferences... All Mosaic configurable options are available from the following menus: